


heartbreaker

by ambassador319



Category: Atypical (TV 2017)
Genre: Anyways, Enjoy!, F/F, Warning:, and that’s the tea folks, but yeah evan does deserve better, cazzie is endgame i’m not sorry, i mean i hate waiting for fics to update so thought i’d just give you the whole thing, if you see a grammar mistake feel free to sue me, ok, promise i edited ruthlessly though xx, read with a cup of coffee or at 1am with a morning to kill, the fic where they get over it and become friends, this is long, why the hell did i not post this in chapters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22058284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambassador319/pseuds/ambassador319
Summary: Evan was prepared to hate Casey's new girlfriend. The last thing he expected was to actually like her.
Relationships: Casey Gardner/Izzie, Evan Chapin & Casey Gardner, Evan Chapin & Izzie
Comments: 17
Kudos: 346





	heartbreaker

**Author's Note:**

> title from: Heartbreaker - Bad Suns
> 
> side note this is NOT a polyamory story lmfao

Izzie is a bully. As in the most stereotypical private school mean girl from every original Netflix show ever. And yet, somehow, Casey fell for her.

Nothing makes sense. 

Evan's still stinging from the breakup when he sees her at the bus stop. His eyes are scratchy underneath and his boss at Don's asked him in the morning if he was hungover and if he wanted to get somebody else to cover his shift but Evan isn't a quitter, and he isn't hungover, neither, he's taking his lunch break late because if he works more he thinks less— and thinking more means thinking about Casey— so he's speed-walking to the store with his mind on the lines on the concrete and he almost walks past her, the preppy rich girl who ruined his life. She's sitting ankles crossed, skirt folded perfectly across her lap. Clayton Prep blazer tossed pompously over her shoulders. Evan does what he's being doing all day. He doesn't think. 

"Feeling proud of yourself?" he snarls.

Her eyes flick to him. "You look like shit, Chapin," she says. It's the first time she's used his last name. Casey loves it, he knows, this manipulation of names, her _Newton_ , but Evan can tell Izzie doesn't mean this as a nickname. 

"Yeah, well, getting cheated on does that to you." 

"Mmhm. Sounds like it sucks."

The _nerve_. He's shaking. Izzie is so _bored_. She hasn't even moved since he stopped in front of her, hasn't sat back or stood up to face him. Except she's put a hand over her bag. It isn't subtle. The EMT training manual would tell him it's a self-comforting gesture; but Evan knows it's to show who's boss. Private school girl hides bag from tech school boy. No one around would question it if she told him to leave. 

"So how's the girlfriend?" he says, louder than before. 

"The what?"

"Your girlfriend. You know. Used to be mine."

She shifts. Finally. "Chill out, dude."

"Come on, Casey's got to be better than that Nate guy." Her face is stony, getting stonier, and it's daring him to say more, say louder, say angry. "Hey, he knows, does he? Or did you keep him in the dark too? Wouldn't he like to know if his girlfriend's—"

"Nate's not my boyfriend," Izzie hisses. Then, in a lower voice: "And Casey isn't my girlfriend."

He snorts. "Too right."

"It's true. Elsa kept Casey home from school today, she's heartbroken over you."

So. Yeah. That throws Evan a little. But Izzie isn't looking at him. Her eyes sweep the street behind him and dart to the group of Clayton kids in the park over, skittish and wary, as though they're a pack of circling wolves. They're just some airheads in blazers. God, he _despises_ her for caring what they think. He bets she's not even out. She's playing with Casey, just fooling around, and when she's had enough she'll clean her nails and dust off her uniform and go and toss aside like trash one of the people he loves most in the world. He can already see it happening. It already hurts.

"You don't even love her." He chokes on the words. "This is, it's some experimental _shit_ , isn't it, and when you're finished—" She tries to interrupt him, but he's unstoppable, "You'll run back to your boyfriend and your stupid friends! And she'll have nobody!"

Izzie stands. Finally. They're face to face, girl to boy, prep school to tech school, and Evan is so right full up of fury he's shaking, and there's Izzie, perfect hair and perfect clothes and shoulders set back perfectly, her eyes steady on him, piercing, drilling in. She's so everything he isn't. He's never been a yeller but he wants to shout at the unfairness of it. 

"You think I don't care about her?" she asks him. Quiet. Knife-sharp. Spot-on Netflix mean girl.

"Not like I do."

Her eyes narrow. It's a challenge. Evan's already lost, he knows that, but boy if he isn't going down without a fight. 

But her bus arrives. She swings her bag onto one shoulder and holds on with one strap and regards him. For a single, wild moment, he considers stopping her. Blocking her from the road, the bus, escape, from all those stupid goggling Clayton Prep kids at his back, and keeping her here for one final showdown in a bus stop in the middle of town.

The next moment Izzie lifts her chin and pushes past. Her shoulder clips his, hard, on the way out. "Watch yourself, Chapin," he hears hissed in his ear. And she's gone. 

Off. Safe. Scot-free. Probably gone straight to tell Casey all about her ex-boyfriend nearly accosted her at a bus stop. 

Evan texts his boss he's going home. 

-

Sharice: _hey! I know we're just side-hoe friends, but. you doing okay?_ Sent 9:52pm.

Evan powers off his controller. The room goes dark. He looks down at the text, nicking the edge of it with his thumbnail over and over.

**Been better.**

_ugh. well my spotify username's @sharicethegreatest if you're single and ready to mingle with some breakup playlists._

He snorts. Thinks of responding with something funny: but. Isn't anger something you're supposed to let out? Beth thinks he's the bigger person, and he doesn't ever want to be mad at Casey. There's only one person he's shown how angry he is to, and that's...well, Izzie.

**Music isn't really my thing. Going for a kill streak on Halo 4 instead.**

_damn, man, that sucks._ The second text takes a little longer to come through. _been there, tho. I had a thing for Casey in Grade 4, it was never gonna work out but still I shredded up this old teddy bear. big regrets! poor bear never did anything wrong :(_

Evan sits up. What the hell? **You're kidding,** he types.

_about the bear? i never kid when it comes to teddy mutilation_

**No, the other thing.**

_yeahh your ex is kind of a chick magnet,_ Sharice replies. 

Shaking his head, he tips his head up to the ceiling. His fingers loosen around his phone. He'd been so naive: so exactly that straight guy stereotype they're always going on about in his mother's reality TV shows. He can't believe himself. He should've seen it coming. He should have seen all of this coming. 

**How'd you get over her?**

Sharice responds at once. _easy, Casey's gross._

 **Yeah,** he texts back— didn't she show him something she found in her ear once? **But. Seriously.**

_fr?_

**For real.**

_i dunno. guess i realised i picked somebody who was never gonna pick me back. and that it was abt time i picked myself._

Evan breathes out. The message glows on his screen, fierce, green and vivid in the dark of the room. **You're pretty cool, you know that?**

_Damn! lay it on thiiiiick Chapin! Maybe I'll upgrade you from side-hoe friend. How does bro sound? Main bitch, perhaps?_

**Bro's good,** he texts back, and he doesn't need to add the smiley face. He knows she gets it.

-

Sam calls him the same week. He didn't even realise the dude had his _number_. 

"You need to come over," Sam Gardner says matter-of-factly. "Zahid is my homie again. We're homie-married."

Evan scrubs at his eyes. He glances down the shining counter, the sinks packed with dishes, and hugs the phone closer to his cheek. "Yeah, Sam, figured. You guys ordered together last night."

"That's right, we did. It was great. I don't need you to give me advice any more, by the way. Because he's back."

"Got it."

"But I need you to help him eat Elsa's brownie. I don't like brownie and there's too much for Zahid." 

"Ask your sister, she's always hungry."

"Can't, she's out with Izzie." 

That stings. That _stings_. Evan slumps against the counter and blinks up into Don's neon lights. Casey had come here just last night, with Sam and Zahid and the others, and she'd sat with him on the stools just across this counter and tried to apologise. Kind of. It had turned into an advice session about UCLA. Evan couldn't think of anything to tell her except _do the hard stuff,_ but for the first time this week things had nearly almost made sense. They'd hugged goodbye. He had walked away first, so he didn't have to see her leave, didn't have to watch the slow spool of their group out the door and the drying of Casey's eyes in the neon light and the shut of the restaurant door as she went away to her big bright future, to her next day at a school three towns away, and, eventually, back to the girl she'd chosen over him. 

"Sam, I can't right now," he says. He hangs up. Sam's a good guy, better than most, and he'll mean it: that brownie will need eating. But Evan can't be a second choice anymore. 

-

They get the call late at night. It's three towns over but Doug fires up the good van anyway. Kids have been hurt.

Evan doesn't realise exactly whose kids they are until they're right in the middle of it, his first case for domestic abuse, and there's a mother holding an ice pack to her face and some guy is bent over the back of a police car and three kids are being bundled into the back of the ambulance, big dark eyes peering out from under their dark hair. He doesn't notice the family resemblance until he spots the familiar, hated figure curled into a shadow of herself on the front steps of the house. Izzie's alone. Officers swarm, a sea of blue and red, and the guy on the car is shouting, and she's just there at the back of the scene, motionless, watching.

He wants someone else to go to her. But all the actual EMTs have their hands full: this is his job. Evan swallows his pride and goes to her. 

"Hey, uh." He hesitates on the bottom step. This is the part where an actual EMT should sit beside her and put a hand on her shoulder and tell her everything's going to be okay. But he can't bring himself to do that. Not with her. 

"I'm good," Izzie snaps, raising her head to glare at him. He's taken aback to see her usual Clayton Prep resting bitch face, eyes stony as ever even with one wicked streak of blood down the side of her face. Red, shining in the streetlight. Barely dried. "You should check on the kids."

"I think you have a head wound," he tries.

"I think you have a job to do," she retorts. Classic Izzie. But that's when he notices her hands on her arms: clutching, un-clutching. Digging into the fabric of her hoodie.

Slowly he sits down, just a few steps below her. She watches him like a hawk. 

"When's Casey getting here?"

"I don't know."

She huffs and turns away, pressing her nose into her elbow. Evan notices the tightness of her shoulders, the slow, regulated rhythm of her breathing. In, out. In. Out. The EMT training manual said body language is about eighty percent more important than words. Evan may be dyslexic, but he's pretty damn good at reading people.

"Doug has your brother and sister in the ambulance," he tells her. "They're only being treated for shock. And we'll let you come see the baby once we've done all the uh, the checks." Izzie looks up at him. "They're gonna be okay." It's gentler than he means to be, but he can't help it. The words feel traitorous. They're barely his own.

"Okay," she says. "Okay, good." She rubs at her nose with her hand, presses her lips together. And the closer he studies her the more and more he sees her holding it all together, tying down her feelings with sailor's knots and practiced fingers. Her stone-face is suddenly less the Clayton Prep bitch benchmark and more a means of survival. It's his own face in the mirror at thirteen years old, hair finger-combed, mouth set, ready to face his dad. 

Without really knowing what he's doing, Evan talks. "My dad was an asshole," he tells her. "When I left, I thought I had to be the man, you know, for my Beth and my mom. Had to be everything he wasn't." Izzie's eyes pin him to the spot. He scratches at the back of his head. "But it's bullshit. We shouldn't be responsible for the things our parents do."

"If you're saying," she begins her voice dangerously low, "I shouldn't be here for my siblings right now—"

"What I'm _saying,_ " he says, "Is it's okay to ask for help. You're not alone."

She doesn't have anything to say to that. He leaves her with a First Aid kit and a promise she can see the baby soon. The EMT manual would've told him to do more: but the grandma comes to pick up the kids, and Casey runs up the stairs to hug Izzie like she did once to tell Evan she loved him, and Izzie gives him a nod over Casey's shoulder, and Doug says he did good. And Evan believes it.

-

Casey invites him over eventually. It's a process. He's still getting used to it: to not seeing her every day, not thinking about her. But it's Sam who first pressures him to come over for a movie, and then it's Doug, and then Elsa, and even Paige and Zahid, and then it's Casey, and finally Evan agrees. 

Sam meets him at the door. He isn't smiling but he looks pleased, in a uniquely Sam way. Paige is apparently upstairs with Elsa, but Doug sees Evan from the table and gives him a nod before he heads upstairs. Zahid shouts from the kitchen, although Evan honestly can't tell if it's a greeting or if the guy's set something on fire. 

As for the girls, they notice him from the couch. Casey at least looks embarrassed at the arm she has flung over Izzie's shoulders, bold and blatant like the boyfriends who pretend they're just "stretching" at the cinema— but Izzie meets him head-on, eyes steady on his, daring. Evan blinks and looks away. He hears Casey get up and come to him. For a second he wishes she wouldn't, that he might slip into the kitchen unnoticed and unknowing.

The second passes as her arms close around him. "Glad you're here," she whispers. He swallows hard and tries not to love her again. 

"We have popcorn in the kitchen," Sam says when she lets him go. "Not as much as Elsa's brownie, but. There's still too much."

Zahid yells from the other room, "Yeah, get your ass in here, buddy!"

Casey grins and shoves him. "You heard him. We'll get the movie set up."

So Evan goes, trying not to meet Izzie's eyes over Casey's shoulder as he does. He hasn't forgotten that vulnerable streak of red on the side of her head those few weeks ago, but he doesn't trust her as far as he could throw her. On the way here it'd occurred to him he'd shouted at her in a public bus stop. That was something you would tell your girlfriend about, surely? Evan was probably on thin ice, if Izzie had had anything to say about it. One wrong look from her and the fight would go on again— the godawful fight, the one he was tired of fighting— and it'd end up with Evan never being able to walk through the Gardners' door again. 

Maybe that's overdramatic. Still: he's on edge, even around the guys in the kitchen. He's watching, listening, waiting, for Izzie to turn up her nose and tell Casey to toss him out, like she did with that stupid toy sheep he tried to give so long ago. 

Eventually Paige comes down the stairs. Zahid and Sam go into the living room. Evan lingers, for reasons he doesn't quite understand. Looking for paper towels and party cups, he listens to the chatter in the next room, the argument over the movie, and he wonders how easily he can be forgotten about, and then he clenches his fists on the edge of the counter to stop himself from thinking that kind of shit. He turns to leave the kitchen. 

Casey is in the doorway. Hand on the frame, leaning: questioning and momentary, like she just swung in after a run. 

"Is everything okay?" she asks. 

"Yeah. Yep." He fumbles, looks around for an excuse. "I just, uh. Getting drinks, if everybody wants some."

"Sure?"

"Yeah, Casey, I'm good."

She goes to open her mouth, then closes it. She is so careful with him now. Evan wants the real Casey back, wicked, sledgehammer Casey, the one who'd mock him for weeks if she'd caught him skulking round scared in the kitchen like this. 

The moment has just stretched too long when Izzie appears. She is hard-edged and in shadow. "Hey," she says, too casual. She's going to take Casey back now. Evan waits for it. 

"I'm going upstairs," she says instead. She doesn't look at him. 

"What? Why?" Casey's hand closes around her elbow. 

"Come on, Newton, you know I'd fall asleep anyway." 

Casey makes a face. She pulls her closer, and even from where he's standing Evan sees a smile (a _smile,_ from the Netflix mean girl!) struggle at the side of Izzie's mouth, hopeless and growing, before she leans forward. With a drop of his heart in his chest he realises what he might be witnessing; he opens the fridge door with a vehemence, and there is a second where the interior light and clatter of bottles block out all sound and every colour. When he finds and has the soft drink out on the counter, Casey is alone in the doorway. 

"She's good?" Evan asks, because the silence is deafening, and completely new, and he has no idea what to do with it. 

"Yeah, she's, um. She's alright." Casey ducks her head. She's glowing. "She just had to, uh. Sleep. She has a job interview tomorrow, for summer."

"Cool." He busies himself with the drinks.

Izzie had left. She'd just left. Without a second glance at Evan.

Maybe he isn't on as thin ice as he thought. 

-

They watch _Harry Potter_ in the low light. It's Paige's favourite, or something. Sam _loudly_ hates the cat, and Zahid _loudly_ loves the Umbridge lady, and Casey once or twice shrugs a quiet whisper in Evan's direction and he whispers back. That's the best part. Not because he likes the secrecy of her words in his ear like he used to— but because she's telling him things. Dumb, snarky things, but things she isn't telling anyone else. 

The movie finishes and half of everybody's popcorn is all over the floor. Paige and Sam and Zahid disappear somewhere suspicious and Evan and Casey are left to clean up, crawling on their hands and knees round the living room, picking popcorn out of couch pillows and the seams of cushions. 

"Elsa's a clean freak," she'd tried to apologise, but he had waved her off and got to work. 

"Yeah, Casey, I know." 

They clear the mess onto one plate. Evan sits up on his knees, checks his watch. The night is dark in the windows. 

"I need to go," he tries to apologise. 

Casey doesn't reply. She's found a hoard of kernels under a blanket. Rolling his eyes at her complaining, he stands, cracking his neck and running his hands through his hair. 

She stands too, plate in hand. Grimaces. "I think somebody licked these." 

"Oh, ew."

 _"Ew,"_ she agrees. "What's the bet it's Zahid?"

"I dunno, Paige has all the weird food obsessions."

"No. Yuck. It has to be Zahid. I'm not letting my brother date anybody who licks popcorn kernels."

"Fair," he agrees. Without his noticing, his smile's gotten away from him, and Casey's grinning back. "Nobody dates a popcorn licker."

"Except Gretchen, maybe."

"And me," he says without thinking. Casey doesn't spit them out, but she used to eat them by the dozen. He realises what he's said too late. 

His ex looks like a deer in headlights. 

"Fuck." Evan laughs. "Shit, sorry. Habit. And Izzie."

The name comes up in the air between them like a smoke, thick and hard to breathe through, and this is Evan's apologising: he breathes in, heart juddering in his chest, and waits for the air to thin again. Toleration is a bit of the human condition that you learn, the EMT manual said, through hardship. Exposed to enough pain, an athlete can endure the burn of a marathon; exposed to enough fear, a mother can lift a truck. Evan can learn to deal with this. 

"I just want to be your friend," Casey says, slowly. She looks him in the eye. She looks guilty. "Is that...okay?"

His next words take all the strength in him. "That's okay."

And then he leaves. Hugs Casey goodbye in the kitchen while she scrapes the kernels off the plate, and she flicks one at him, and he escapes, sticking his tongue out as he goes. He doesn't say goodbye to the others because they're still missing, but he sends a quick thank you text for Elsa to read in the morning. The house is dim and warm and he puts on his shoes in the dark. Shrugs on his jacket. Glances behind to check if he missed anything, and then he goes to the door, and goes—

No he doesn't— there's a tap on his shoulder. He turns. He doesn't know who he expected, but it definitely wasn't Izzie. She's standing there in the low light, her hands loose at her sides and her shoulders curled small in what he recognises as one of Casey’s shirts. Her usual prissy Clayton Prep poise is gone. She looks more tired than he’s ever seen her. 

"Hey," she says. "I thought I'd let you know. I'm not going to tell her."

"About what?" 

"The bus stop. You were angry and I, um, I don't blame you. So. That's it."

"Okay.” He doesn't thank her. He turns to leave but she stops him again. 

“Evan,” Izzie says. Her voice sounds sounds strange on his name. It's only ever been _you,_ or _him,_ or _chill out dude,_ icy and unforgiving. "I am sorry, you know.”

He should be angry. He wants to be. But this is Izzie as Casey must know her: hair undone, earrings missing, face cut up with lines of shadow. He guesses it’s comforting that she isn’t perfect. That she isn’t constantly, effortlessly, flawlessly better than him. 

“Take care of her," he says finally. This feels ceremonious. Her chin lifts and she gives him a nod. 

"And they say chivalry is dead," Elsa comments thoughtfully from the upstairs bannister. They jump. "Sorry! I'm not here!"

She disappears. Izzie looks at Evan, eyes wide, and horribly, impossibly, he laughs. 

"I think that's my cue to leave," he says. The door opens so easy. He goes. 

-

He runs. Like a kid. Away from home. 

12.12am and the world is a glimmer of street and wide, empty sky. Road-echo and silence. Evan isn't a runner but he has his car; she had started up, thank _fuck,_ even with the keys fumbling in his fingers and his dad coming steadily, unstoppably down the driveway: and now he's alone. He has no idea where he's going. Only that right now there is an endless momentum to everything and that he has to keep moving, otherwise everything will catch up to him, and then— well, he doesn't know what he'll do. 

His dad came from nowhere. Out of the night like a ghost after he, Beth and Mom had sat down for dinner. The day at work had been okay and Doug had texted saying he didn't have to do the written EMT test. Casey had texted saying _ok boomer_ after he sent her a dumb Facebook meme. And Evan honestly should have expected it, because Dad always pulls shit like this on days like these. He always comes just when things are starting to get better. 

Evan leaves his car in a corner of the trailer park. He pushes his hands deep into his pockets and draws his hoodie tight about his face and goes on a walk. The air is cold and tastes wrong, of rubbish trucks and gathering morning dew, but it's better than the stuffiness of trying to sleep curled up in the backseat.

Eventually he reaches a street he recognises. Light shocks the dark breadths of front porches and breathes faint patterns onto the windows of houses. If there are people awake in the houses, they are going to sleep, slowly, safely, cocooned in their pockets of warmth and the sounds of their parents moving about in a shared bedroom downstairs. Evan takes out his phone. He weighs it in his hand. The shake in him grows. 

Casey is his only friend who knows about his dad. She doesn’t want him anymore, but, still, she’s the only one who knows. She is the only one who can help him now. 

So Evan calls his ex.

She picks up on the fourth ring. _“Hey?"_

"Casey," he begins, "I'm sorry, I just— my dad—"

_"Oh, uh, it's Izzie."_

"Oh. Sorry. Shit." He jabs at the end-call button and misses. His vision's blurry. "Sorry, ah." He knocks the speaker button and static screams. "Fuck. Sorry. Hanging up."

_"No, Evan—"_

He ends the call. Casey's number calls him back. He lets it ring, putting his hands to his head, clawing at the roots of his hair. He tilts his head to the night sky and he breathes into it, he bites into it. Shit. He should've known better. He's alone. He is completely and utterly alone. 

The phone rings again.

Fuck it. 

"Listen, just tell me where Casey is—" 

She talks over him. _"Evan, where— she's asleep, damnit, she's sick, she's sleeping."_

"I tell you to take care of her and you go and get her sick?" He laughs. The laugh is shaky. Breaking. He knows she can hear it but he doesn't care. "Is she okay?"

_"Just flu. What happened?"_

Evan considers hanging up again. But he’s so tired. He sinks down to the curb of this street, the Gardners’ street, just a ways from their house, numb, knees shaking, and he tells her.

Soon a silhouette comes out the front of the Gardners' house and onto the street. He doesn't wave but Izzie must see him, because she jogs over, trainers glowing in the dark. Even jogging she’s fast. She reaches him and drops down onto the curb at his side, barely out of breath. 

He doesn’t say anything. For a moment the silence gapes between them, endless, empty, like the blackness at the turn of the road. He wishes he hadn’t called.

“When this happens with my mom,” Izzie tries, “I imagine going someplace far, far away.”

He rubs at his eyes with his sleeve. “That won't work for me.”

“Or I go running. Beat it out of me, you know. Just forget.”

“I forgot my running shoes, actually.”

She cracks a grin at that. Evan doesn’t have the strength to muster anything in return but he feels the stir in his chest, the stir of that smile you return to strangers, almost reflexively, habitually— of something given and answered. Such a simple, underwhelming feeling, but it glows inside of him, breaking the dark. 

“And if _all_ of that doesn’t work—“ Izzie sighs, “Then I guess I eat away my feelings. In a crappy diner. At two am in the morning.” She slaps her hands down on the curb like she’s come to a decision. “Come on, then. I want waffles.”

She stands and holds out a hand. He doesn’t take it, but he gets to his feet. For the first time it occurs to him how short she is. Shorter than him, by far. It had always seemed like she’d towered over him before.

“Why do you even care?” Evan asks. 

Izzie just shrugs. “Do I need a reason?”

This is insane. This is the girl who stole Casey. This is the girl whose name stained the blue night of his first breakup and his crying in the car afterwards, his crying at work afterwards, even after that damn bus stop. The girl who’s more a man than he is, that motherfucker, with her perfect blazer and her superstar track record, with her eyes dry and stony the night her stepdad was arrested for child abuse— the girl who’s responsible for his hand in his hair every morning and that glance in the mirror, that fierce, desperate reminder, _you’re not_ **_lesser._** Evan is wild at Izzie, rabid, stark raving mad. He isn’t seriously considering this. 

Except he is. 

“I’ve only got change,” he hears himself say. “But lend me a fiver for toppings, and I’ll drive.”

“Okay. Done.”

And off they go into the night. Clayton Prep and tech school. Track star and high school dropout. Ex and current-something. Except maybe it’s crazy, or it’s 2am, because Evan is walking fast down the street to keep up with her and their shadows flash under the trees and the streetlights and their hushed chatter ( _keep up!_ _how are you this excited about waffles? they’re just crust!)_ clatters on the concrete like a kid on a skateboard and he thinks, right now, how not different they are.

-

 **Evan:** _I don’t think I’m angry anymore._ Sent 3:54am.   
  
He doesn’t expect Sharice to be up. He just needed to write it down.

 **Evan:** _Just got back from Waffle House with Izzie. Long story tell you later. But it was cool._

Izzie and him had gone to Waffle House, and they’d ordered way too many toppings and had had to sit stupefied for a second in the table by the window, staring at the direct insults to god they’d just created, before digging in. Evan had learned things. Like this: Izzie eats more than him, even more than Casey, probably, and she pumps her fist when she’s done like she’s won a race instead of finished a waffle. He had learned she doesn’t have much change on her but she’ll dig out the cents and count them so Evan can have his promised extras. And he had learned she gets him more than he knows. They’re polar opposite people, but Izzie gets it, the numbness, the shake in his legs, and she takes him outside to sit on the curb again so the waitress doesn’t interrupt, and she listens. 

But most of what he learned wasn’t about her. It was about him. There’s some weird lightness in his chest and he thinks he’s sad, maybe, he can’t place it. But he knows it’s important. And he knows how angry he isn’t anymore. 

**Evan:** _She’s a good person._

 **Evan:** _But_ _not perfect. she actually likes that jelly stuff you KNOW is hell. and she thinks she’s a badass for staying up past midnight._ _Yeah, you thought_ I _was uncool._

 **Evan:** _I think I hated her more for being perfect than taking Casey._

Why's he still typing? No clue. His head is blank, he’s exhausted, his words come without his telling them to. 

**Evan:** _yeah it’s just_

 **Evan:** _rich Clayton kid and everything_

 **Evan:** _idk what im saying I’m really tired but it’s nice that she isn’t_

 **Evan:** _isn’t_ _actually_

 **Evan:** _better than me_

His eyes are swimming. There’s a sting in him but it’s a good sting, it’s the hard stuff, it’s hard, but it’s good, and he falls on his back and goes to sleep right in the middle of it— but not before sending one last text—

 **Evan:** _i think i wouldnt mind being friends_

-

It's a sunny Saturday evening when Evan finally, probably, comes to peace with it: Izzie isn’t the best friend anymore. He is. 

Mid-afternoon, they'd gone out for pizza. All of them. Sam and his new friend from university, because Paige was out at work; Zahid, who got _very_ into arguing with said university friend over 'homie rights' or something; and Casey. And Evan. He has other friends, and he literally _works_ at Don's, but he went anyway. He went and then Sharice went too. He guesses he could say she'd come to help him out, with being around Casey and all— but mostly he thinks it was for the pizza. And because they're friends, now. Online friends. Still. BFFs, Sharice calls them, although Evan is still sticking solidly to bros. 

Anyway: he doesn't think he needs help being around Casey. Not anymore. She'd tossed a fry at his face and cackled, like she used to, and he didn't get heart palpitations from the sound— he just got annoyed. Sharice is a slow eater, so he and Casey had goaded her into handing over the rest so they could all finish and get to the ice cream already. Once he caught her looking at him and he smiled. Just smiled. And then he went on with his conversation with Sam. 

It freaks him out. The bodily change he feels inside himself, around Casey, now: the slow of his heartbeat, the calm in his skin. But it feels right. 

"You're pretty cool about this," Sharice had noted, when the others left for the register. "Like, weirdly cool. Gentlemanly cool. If Casey came back right now and told us Izzie's proposed to her you'd probably be like, yeah, I'll be best man."

It was the first mention Sharice had made of the breakup all day. All week, even. She watched him for a reaction.

He sipped his drink. "Yeah. I'm pretty cool, aren't I?"

And that was the last they talked about it. 

The Gardner home is glowing with the late hour when they get back. Elsa's done another of her cleans and light runs wetly along every windowpane like a coat of fresh paint. The floor glimmers and the walls shine. Evan thinks anywhere he goes, he'll leave a mark. 

Izzie's had something with the kids all day but she arrives at the house not long after them, hair brushed and shirt tucked. She kisses Casey on the cheek at the door and doesn't glance at Evan afterward, not challenging, not nothing, and it's probably insane that he doesn't care. 

Well. He does care a little, when she keeps not looking at him. 

Everyone says hi to Izzie. She says hi back. The music is put on and her entrance is forgotten. Sam loses his headphones so they turn off the music and throw Netflix on and mock some weird high school show Sharice is into. And never once does Izzie look Evan in the eye. 

He guesses he should've expected it— this is just how they act around each other. But it sort of sucks. When Casey mentioned Izzie was coming today, he had a flash of looking forward to it that was bright as a text message in the 3am dark. Evan doesn't give a shit about their stupid bullshit at each other. What he does give a shit about is the steady beat of his heart in his chest as he pulled into the driveway of his mother's house last Friday. He'd held that beat in his hands, warm and strong, against the cold of the steering wheel. Izzie had given him the strength to walk back into that house that night. He had remembered he was not a dead thing, caught in the drowning currents of his parent's wake; he was alive, and he was necessary, if not to anyone else's life then to his own. 

So still half-hating her, waiting and impatient, Evan asks,

"Hey, anyone need some snacks? Izzie, want to come to the store?"

Izzie blinks. And then she smiles: a hesitant slight of a smile that, as much as Evan hates to admit it, brightens up the whole room. “Okay,” she says. “Okay, yeah.”

Casey watches them all the way to the door. 

The way to the dairy is short and it goes the same way they went to the Waffle House. Out here the air is lighter and breezier but it has an undeniable edge. They get to the dairy and load up on sweets, and he chucks her a bag of Twizzlers because Casey said she likes those, and she gives him a nod with a little pinch to her mouth like a baby bird, and Evan catches himself thinking she looks weirdly cute. Not like how a guy says a girl is cute— or, well, like a girl says a girl is cute— but more like a kid sister, or one of the freshmen at his tech school who ask for directions to the cafeteria. She mostly looks unsure. Evan's pretty sure nobody on the Clayton campus, aside from Casey, has ever seen Izzie look unsure of herself. 

They still haven't said anything to each other by the walk back. It's the street before the Gardners' and the houses are full of light. Evan swings his bag of loot as he walks and thinks that he's sick of the edge in the air. 

So he breaks the silence. "You know, I don't get you."

"What's to get?" 

"You. One minute we could be friends and then you're back to...whatever you are." He waves a hand in the air. "I don't get it."

"I'm not your friend." The words are cold and clinging. She shrugs. "I'm not."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Listen," Izzie tells him, "Even if you did want to be my friend, which is _insane_ , there's no way I'm letting you. Call me at two am, that's cool, okay, I know your dad's an asshole— but you know what? Honestly?" Her face is bright and hard. "My life is a _fucking_ mess. I have no idea why Casey likes me. You're a good guy and trainee EMT and you have a mom who loves you. The least you deserve is not to be dragged down by me."

Evan stares. He'd spent all this time thinking she was the perfect girl in the blazer, but no: she's just like him, just as messed up, just as desperate and insecure and trying as he is. His throat burns. His stomach roils. 

"That's not—" he tries. Izzie scowls. She kicks at the pavement. 

"I don't want to know you," she mutters. "It'll only be worse, okay, the fact I helped someone cheat on you."

There it is. The end of it. Evan aches behind the eyes and the back of the throat. What Izzie said doesn't fix everything but it fixes _him_ , the thing that's been eating him up ever since Casey left him. He takes a breath of the air. The air is fresh and cool.

He _forgives_ her. 

"That's so dumb," he says, grinning. "That's _so_ dumb." Izzie speeds up and he catches up to her. He grabs her arm. "Izzie."

Her arm wrenches free. There is no stone in her eye, only wild and water and fog, and he lets his smile slip from him. "Izzie," he repeats. "It wasn't your fault." 

She scoffs. "We both know it kind of was."

"Kind of," he agrees. "But Casey made her choice. Nobody, not you, not me, can change that."

"So what? You let it go, just like that? Who does that?"

"I get on with it," Evan says. "Yeah, it fucking sucks, and it makes me feel like shit. I don't want to keep fighting to feel like that."

Izzie scuffs her shoe against the pavement. The light comes through the trees overhead and Evan feels the warmth on the back of his shirt, pressing like hands, holding him up. "You're actually okay," he tells her simply. "You're a Clayton princess and you're kind of a bitch but you're actually okay, and I want to be friends with you. Sue me."

"Don't be friends with me," she tries, weakly.

"Don't tell me what to do."

She works to hide her smile but he sees it where it struggles upward, relentless, so he nudges her and says race you back, and she says you know you'll lose, and he takes off without a backward glance down the sunlit street, and after a beat there are footsteps behind him, _terrifyingly_ fast, and Izzie gets to the driveway far before him but he laughs as he catches up, breathless, clear-headed, and she looks at him for a minute before she rolls her eyes and says I told you so, and he snatches the bag of candy from her in response. And nothing is how it's supposed to be but somehow it makes sense. And they go inside.

-

When they get inside Casey sees them at once. They're knocking shoulders. Izzie shoves Evan, snatching her candy back, and he backs off with his hands up, and turns to take off his shoes. His ex's eyes flicker between the two. He feels them pin to his shoulder blades like a thrown dart.

"What took you so long?" she whines.

"Making out, I bet," Zahid quips at once from the kitchen.

Casey's eyes go wide with horror. 

"Your heteronormativity is disgusting," Izzie responds to him cheerfully. She drops down on the couch beside Casey and nuzzles her, grin quick against the side of her head, like they're a pair of playfighting animals. "Too gay to hear you." Zahid makes a gagging noise. 

"We were having a long heartfelt chat about our friendship," Evan explains helpfully. Casey's eyes bulge. Luckily, she recovers fast.

“You can’t have him, Iz, he’s mine,” she growls, tackling her girlfriend against the couch. “ _My_ best friend.”

“I’ll fight you,” Izzie declares, looking her right in the face. Even though the girls’ eyes hold each other’s, shuttered to the rest of the room, Evan feels a flash of not being forgotten about, and he ducks his head to keep his smile close to him. 

“That’s so gross, Izzie,” he complains. “You know Sharice is my best friend.”

The girl in question fist pumps from the doorway of the next room. Rolling her eyes at her girlfriend’s crestfallen expression, Casey leans in to kiss Izzie. “That's even more gross, Casey!" Evan calls and she flips him off behind Izzie's back. He laughs.

And maybe he should take a note out of Sharice's book and just revel in being friends. Because it isn't everything, but it's nice. It's good. Evan doesn't want to jinx it, but he thinks maybe, just maybe, things make sense again.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for my friend who loves Evan, and for me, who only watched the show for Casey and Izzie. Putting myself in her shoes was weird because she saw the story completely differently than I did. There was something electric about writing the story like it was somebody’s else’s, like it was outside of me and unwilling to conform to my opinions. It wrote me. So. I know you were probably hoping for a purely cazzie fic- but hope you liked this!


End file.
